A Romance in Transit

There was triumph in Brockway's grin.

"No, he didn't – not that time; I out-witted him. And I didn't go without my supper, either. I had the honor of dining with the President's party in the Naught-fifty."

"You did! Then I'm sure she must have invited you; he'd never do it. How did it happen?"

Brockway told the story of the disabled cooking-stove, and Mrs. Burton laughed till the tears came. "How perfectly ridiculous!" she exclaimed, between gasps. "And she took your part and invited you to dinner, did she? Then what happened?"

"I was properly humiliated and sat upon," said Brockway, in wrathful recollection. "They talked about everything under the sun that I'd never heard of, and I had to sit through it all like a confounded oyster!"

"Oh, nonsense!" said Mrs. Burton, sweetly; "you know a good many things that they never dreamed of. But how did you manage to get Gertrude away from them all?"

"I didn't; she managed it for me. When we got up from the table the train was just slowing into Carvalho. I was going to run away, as befitted me, but she proposed a breath of fresh air on the platform."

"Then you had a chance to show her that you weren't born dumb, and I hope you improved it. But how did you dodge Mr. Vennor?"

"We missed a turn and went forward to look at the engine. Then Ger – Miss Vennor thought she would like to take a ride in the cab, and – "

"And, of course, you arranged it. You knew that was just the thing of all others that would reinstate you. It was perfectly Machiavellian!"

Brockway opened his eyes very wide. "Knew what?" he said, bluntly. "I only knew it was the thing she wanted to do, and that was enough. Well, we skipped back and notified Mrs. Dunham – she's the chaperon, you know – and then we chased ahead again and got on the engine."

"Where I'll promise you she enjoyed more new sensations in a minute than you had all through their chilly dinner," put in Mrs. Burton, who had ridden on many locomotives.

"She did, indeed," Brockway rejoined, exultantly, living over again the pleasure of the brief hour in the retelling. "At Arriba, the engineer turned the 926 over to me, and I put Miss Vennor up on the box and let her run between Arriba and Red Butte."

"Well – of all things! Do you know, Fred, I've had a silly idea all afternoon that I'd like to help you, but dear me! you don't need my help. Of course, after that, it was all plain sailing for you."

Brockway shook his head. "You're taking entirely too much for granted," he protested. "It was only a pleasant bit of 'distraction,' as she called it, for her, and there was no word – that is I – oh, confound it all! I couldn't presume on a bit of good comradeship like that!"

"You – couldn't – presume! Why, you silly, silly boy, it was the chance of a lifetime! So daringly original – so utterly unhackneyed! And you couldn't presume – I haven't a bit of patience with you."

"I'm sorry for that; I need a little sympathy."

"You don't deserve it; but perhaps you'd get it if you could show cause."

"Can't you see? Don't you understand that nothing can ever come of it?" Brockway demanded, relapsing fathoms deep into the abyss of hopelessness.

"Nothing ever will come of it if you go on squandering your chances as you have to-day. What is the matter with you? Are you afraid of the elderly gentleman with the calculating eye?"

"Not exactly afraid of him; but he's a millionnaire, and Miss Vennor has a fortune in her own right. And I – "

"Don't finish it. I understand your objection; you are poor and proud – and that's as it should be; but tell me – you are in love with Miss Vennor, aren't you? When did it begin?"

"A year ago."

"You didn't permit yourself to fall in love with her until you knew all about her circumstances and prospects, of course?"

"You know better than that. It was – it was what you'd call love at first sight," he confessed, rather shame-facedly; and then he told her how it began.

"Very good," said Mrs. Burton, approvingly. "Then you did actually manage to fall in love with Gertrude herself, and not with her money. But now, because you've found out she has money, you are going to spoil your chance of happiness, and possibly hers. Is that it?"

Brockway tried to explain. "It's awfully good of you to try to put it in that light, but no one would ever believe that I wasn't mercenary – that I wasn't a shameless cad of a fortune-hunter. I couldn't stand that, you know."

"No, of course not; not even for her sake. Besides, she doubtless looks upon you as a fortune-hunter, and – "

"What? Indeed she doesn't anything of the kind."

"Well, then, if you are sure she doesn't misjudge you, what do you care for the opinion of the world at large?"

"Much; when you show me a man who doesn't care for public opinion, I'll show you one who ought to be in jail."

"Fudge! Please don't try to hide behind platitudes. But about Gertrude, and your little affair, which is no affair; what are you going to do about it?"

"Nothing; there is nothing at all to be done," Brockway replied with gloomy emphasis.

"I suppose nothing would ever induce you to forgive her for being rich?"

"I can never quite forgive myself for being poor, since it's going to cost me so much."

"You are too equivocal for any use. Answer my question," snapped the small inquisitor.

"How can I?" Brockway inquired, with masculine density. "Forgiveness implies an injury, and – "

"Oh, oh– how stupid you can be when you try! You know perfectly well what I mean."

"I'm not sure that I do," said Brockway, whose wit was easily confounded by a sharp tongue.

"Then I'll put it in words of one syllable. Do you mean to ask Miss Vennor to be your wife?"

"I couldn't, and keep my self-respect."

"Not if you knew she wanted you to?" persisted the small tormentor.

"Oh, I say – that couldn't be, you know," he protested. "I'm nothing more than a pleasant acquaintance to her, at the very most."

"But if you knew she did?"

"How could I know it?"

"We are not discussing ways and means; answer the question."

Thereat the man, tempted beyond what he could bear, abdicated in favor of the lover. "If I could be certain of that, Mrs. Burton – if I could be sure she loves me, nothing on earth should stand in the way of our happiness. Is that what you wanted me to say?"

The little lady clapped her hands enthusiastically. "I thought I could find the joint in your armor, after awhile. Now you may go; I want to be by myself and think. Good-night."

Brockway took the summary dismissal good-naturedly, and, as the train was just then slowing into a station, he ran out to drop off and catch the upcoming hand-rail of the Tadmor.

XI

AN ARRIVAL IN TRANSIT

When Gertrude bade Brockway good-night, she changed places for the moment with a naughty child on its way to face the consequences of a misbehavior, entering the private car with a childish consciousness of wrong-doing fighting for place with a rather militant determination to meet reproof with womanly indifference. Much to her relief, she found her father alone, and there was no distinguishable note of displeasure in his greeting.

"Well, Gertrude, did you enjoy your little diversion? Sit down and tell me about it. How does the cab compare with the sitting-room of a private car?"

The greeting was misleading, but she saw fit to regard it as merely the handshaking which precedes a battle royal.

"I enjoyed it much," she answered, quietly. "It was very exciting; and very interesting, too."

"Ah; I presume so. And your escort took good care of you – made you quite comfortable, I suppose."

"Yes."

Mr. Vennor leaned back in his chair and regarded her gravely through the swirls of blue smoke curling upward from his cigar. "Didn't it strike you as being rather – ah – a girlish thing for you to do? in the night, you know, and with a comparative stranger?"

Gertrude thought the battle was about to open, and began to throw up hasty fortifications. "Mr. Brockway is not a stranger; you may remember that we became quite well acquainted – "

"Pardon me," the President interrupted; "that is precisely the point at which I wished to arrive – your present estimate of this young man. I have nothing to say about your little diversion on the engine. You are old enough to settle these small questions of the proprieties for yourself. But touching this young mechanic, it might be as well for us to understand each other. Have you fully considered the probable consequences of your most singular infatuation?"

It was a ruthless question, and the hot blood of resentment set its signals flying in Gertrude's cheeks. Up to that evening, she had thought of the passenger agent only as an agreeable young man of a somewhat unfamiliar type, of whom she would like to know more; but Brockway's moment of abandonment in the cab of the 926 had planted a seed which threatened to germinate quickly in the warmth of the present discussion.

"I'm not quite sure that I understand you," she said, picking and choosing among the phrases for the least incendiary. "Would you mind telling me in so many words, just what you mean?"

"Not in the least. A year ago you met this young man in a most casual way, and – to put it rather brutally – fell in love with him. I haven't the slightest idea that he cares anything for you in your proper person, or that he would have thrust himself upon us to-day if he had known that your private fortune hangs upon the event of your marriage under certain conditions which you evidently purpose to ignore. If, after the object-lesson you had at the dinner-table this evening, you still prefer this young fortune-hunter to your cousin Chester, I presume we shall all have to submit; but you ought at least to tell us what we are to expect."

If he had spared the epithets, she could have laughed at the baseless fabric of supposition, but the contemptuous sentence passed upon Brockway put her quickly upon his defence, and, incidentally, did more to further that young man's cause than any other happening of that eventful day.

"I suppose you have a right to say and think what you please about me," she said, trying vainly to be dispassionate; "but you might spare Mr. Brockway. He didn't invite himself to dinner; and it was I who proposed the walk on the platform and the ride on the engine."

"Humph! you are nothing if not loyal. Nevertheless, I wish you might look the facts squarely in the face."

Gertrude knew there were no facts, of the kind he meant, but his persistence brought forth fruit after its kind, and she stubbornly resolved to neither affirm nor deny. Wherefore she said, a little stiffly:

"I'm quite willing to listen to anything you wish to say."

"Then I should like to ask if you have counted the cost. Assuming that this young man's intentions are unmercenary – and I doubt that very much – it isn't possible that there can be anything in common between you. The social world in which you move, and that to which he belongs, are as widely separated as the poles. I do not say yours is the higher plane, or his the lower – though I may have my own opinion as to that – but I do say they are vastly different; and the woman who knowingly marries out of her class has much to answer for. Admitting that you will do no worse than this, how can you hope to find anything congenial in a man who has absolutely nothing to say for himself at an ordinary family dinner-table?"

"I'm not at all sure that Mr. Brockway hadn't anything to say for himself, though he couldn't be expected to know or care much about the things we talked of. And it occurred to me at the time that it wasn't quite kind in us to talk intellectual shop from the soup to the dessert, as we did."

The President smiled, but the cold eyes belied the outward manifestation of kindliness. "You may thank me for that, if you choose," he went on, in the same calm argumentative tone. "I wanted to point a moral, and if I didn't succeed, it wasn't the fault of the subject. But that is only the social side; a question of taste. Unfortunately, there is a more serious matter to be considered. You know the terms of your granduncle's will; that your Cousin Fleetwell's half of the estate became his unconditionally on his coming of age, and that your portion is only a trust until your marriage with your cousin?"

"I ought to know; it's been talked of enough."

"And you know that if the marriage fail by your act, you will lose this legacy?"

"Yes."

"And that it will go to certain charitable institutions, and so be lost, not only to you, but to the family?"

"I know all about it."

"You know it, and yet you would deliberately throw yourself away on a fortune-hunting mechanic – a man whom you have known only since yesterday? It's incredible!"

"It is you who have said it – not I," she retorted; "but I'm not willing to admit that it would be all loss and no gain. There would at least be a brand-new set of sensations, and I'm very sure they wouldn't all be painful."

It was rebellion, pure and simple, and for once in his life Francis Vennor gave place to wrath – plebeian wrath, vociferous and undignified.

"Shame on you!" he cried; "you are a disgrace to the name – it's the blood of that cursed socialist on your mother's side. Sit still and listen to me – " Gertrude, knowing her own temper, was about to run away – "If you marry that infernal upstart, you'll do it at your own expense, do you hear? You sha'n't finger a penny of my money as long as I can keep you out of it. Do you understand?"

"I should be very dull if I didn't understand," she replied, preparing to make good her retreat. "If you are quite through, perhaps you will let me say that you are tilting at a windmill of your own building. So far as I know, Mr. Brockway hasn't the slightest intention of asking me to marry him; and until you took the trouble to demonstrate the possibility, I don't think it ever occurred to me. But after what you've said, I don't think I can ever consent to be married to Cousin Chester – it would be too mercenary, you know;" and with this parting shot she vanished.

In the privacy of her own stateroom she sat at the window to think it all out. It was all very undutiful, doubtless, and she was sorry for her part in the quarrel almost before the words were cold. She could scarcely forgive herself for having allowed her father to carry his assumption to such lengths, but the temptation had proved irresistible. It was such a delicious little farce, and if it might only have stopped short of the angry conclusion – but it had not, and therein lay the sting of it. Whereupon, feeling the sting afresh, she set her face flintwise against the prearranged marriage.

"I sha'n't do it," she said aloud, pressing her hot cheek against the cool glass of the window. "I don't love Chester, and I never shall – not in the way I should. And if I marry him, I shall be just what papa called Mr. Brockway – only he isn't that, or anything of the kind. Poor Mr. Brockway! If he knew what we have been talking about – "

From that point reflection went adrift in pleasanter channels. How good-natured and forgiving Mr. Brockway had been! He must have known that he was purposely ignored at the dinner-table, where he was an invited guest, and yet he had not resented it; and what better proof of gentle breeding than this could he have given? Then, in that crucial moment of danger, how surely his presence of mind and trained energies had forestalled the catastrophe. That was grand – heroic. It was well worth its cost in terror to look on and see him strive with and conquer the great straining monster of iron and steel. After that, one couldn't well listen calmly to such things as her father had said of him.

And, admitting the truth of what had been said about his intellectual shortcomings, was a certain glib familiarity with the modern catch-words of book-talk and art criticism a fair test of intellectuality? Gertrude, with her cheek still touching the cool window-pane, thought not. One might read the reviews and talk superficially of more books than the most painstaking student could ever know, even by sight. In like manner, one might walk through the picture galleries and come away freighted with great names wherewith to awe the untravelled lover of art. It was quite evident that Mr. Brockway had done neither of these things, and yet he was thoughtful and keenly observant; and if he were ignorant of art, he knew and understood nature, which is the mother of all art.

From reinstating the passenger agent in his rights and privileges as a man, she came presently upon the little incident in the cab of the 926. How much or how little did he mean when he said he was happy to his finger-tips? On the lips of the men of her world, such sayings went for naught; they were but the tennis-balls of persiflage, served deftly, and with the intent that they should rebound harmless. But she felt sure that such a definition went wide of Mr. Brockway's meaning; of compliments as such, he seemed to know less than nothing. And then he had said that whatever came between them – no, that was not it – whatever happened to either of them… Ah, well, many things might happen – would doubtless happen; but she would not forget, either.

The familiar sighing of the air-brake began again, and the low thunder of the patient wheels became the diapason beneath the shrill song of the brake-shoes. Then the red eye of a switch-lamp glanced in at Gertrude's window, and the train swung slowly up to the platform at another prairie hamlet. Just before it stopped, she caught a swift glimpse of a man standing with outstretched arms, as if in mute appeal. It was Brockway. He was merely standing in readiness to grasp the hand-rail of the Tadmor when it should reach him; but Gertrude knew it not, and if she had, it would have made no difference. It was the one fortuitous touch needed to open that inner chamber of her heart, closed, hitherto, even to her own consciousness. And when the door was opened she looked within and saw what no woman sees but once in her life, and having once seen, will die unwed in very truth if any man but one call her wife.

Once more the drumming wheels began the overture; the lighted bay-window of the station slipped backward into the night, and the bloodshot eye of another switch-lamp peered in at the window and was gone; but Gertrude neither saw nor heard. The things of time and place were around and about her, but not within. A new song was in her heart, its words inarticulate as yet, but its harmonies singing with the music of the spheres. A little later, when the "Flying Kestrel" was again in mid-flitting, and the separate noises of the train had sunk into the soothing under-roar, she crept into her berth wet-eyed and thankful, and presently went to sleep too happy to harbor anxious thought for the morrow of uncertainties.

XII

THE ANCIENTS AND INVALIDS

Brockway was up betimes the following morning, though not of his own free will. Two hours before the "Flying Kestrel" was due in Denver, the porter of the Tadmor awakened him at the command of the irascible gentleman with the hock-bottle shoulders and diaphanous nose. While the passenger agent was sluicing his face in the wash-room some one prodded him from behind, and a thin, high-pitched voice wedged itself into the thunderous silence.

"Mr. ah – Brockway; I understand that you are purposing to take the party to ah – Feather Plume or ah – Silver Feather, or some such place to-day, and I ah – protest! I have no desire to leave Denver until my ticket is made to conform to my stipulations, sir."

Brockway had soap in his eyes, and the porter had carefully hidden the towels; for which cause his reply was brief and to the point.

"Please wait till I get washed and dressed before you begin on me, won't you?"

"Wait? Do you say ah – wait? I have been doing nothing but wait, sir, ever since my ah – stipulations were ignored. It's an outrage, sir, I – "

Brockway had found a towel and was using it vigorously as a counter-irritant.

"For Heaven's sake, go away and let me alone until I can get my clothes on!" he exclaimed. "I promised you yesterday you should have the thirty days that you don't need."

The aggrieved one had his ticket out, but he put it away again in tremulous indignation. "Go away? Did I ah – understand you to tell me to go away, sir? I ah-h-h – " but words failed him, and he shuffled out of the wash-room, cannoning against the little gentleman in the grass-cloth duster and velvet skull-cap in the angle of the vestibule.

"Good-morning, Mr. Brockway," said the comforter, cheerily. "Been having a tilt with Mr. Ticket-limits to begin the day with?"

"Oh, as a matter of course," Brockway replied, flinging the damp towel into a corner, and brushing his hair as one who transmutes wrath into vigorous action.

"Find him a bit trying, don't you? What particular form does his mania take this morning?"

"It's the same old thing. I promised him, yesterday, I'd get the extension on his ticket, and now he says he won't leave Denver till it's done. He 'ah-protests' that I sha'n't go to Silver Plume with the party; wants me to stay in Denver and put in the day telegraphing."

"Of course, you'll do it; you do anything anybody asks you to."

"Oh, I suppose I'll have to – to keep the peace. And if I don't go and 'personally conduct' the others, there'll be the biggest kind of a row. Isn't it enough to wear the patience of a good-natured angel to frazzles?"

"It is, just that. Have a cigar?"

"No, thank you. I don't smoke before breakfast."

"Neither do I, normally; but like most other people, I leave all my good habits at home when I travel. But about Jordan and the thirty-odd; how are you going to dodge the row?"

"The best way I can. There is a good friend of mine on the train – Mr. John Burton, the general agent of the C. & U., in Salt Lake – and perhaps I can get him to go up the canyon for me."

"Think he will do it?"

"I guess so; to oblige me. He'd lose only a day; and he'd make thirty-odd friends for the C. & U., don't you see."

"I must confess that I don't see, from a purely business point of view," was the rejoinder. "We are all ticketed out and back, and we can't change our route if we want to."

Brockway laughed. "The business of passenger soliciting is far-reaching. Some of you – perhaps most of you – will go again next year; and if the general agent of the C. & U. is particularly kind and obliging, you may remember his line."

"Dear me – why, of course! You say your friend is on the train?"

"Yes."

"Very well; you go and see him, and I'll help you out by breaking the news to the thirty-odd."

Brockway struggled into his coat and shook hands with the friendly one. "Mr. Somers, you're my good angel. You've undertaken a thankless task, though."

The womanish face under the band of the skull-cap broke into a smile which was not altogether angelic. "I shall get my pay as I go along; our friend with the bad case of ticket dementia will be carrying the entire responsibility for your absence before I get through."

"Good! pile it on thick," said Brockway, chuckling. "Make 'em understand that I'd give all my old shoes to go – that I'm so angry with Jordan for spoiling my day's pleasure that I can't see straight."

"I'll do it," the little man agreed. "Take a cigar to smoke after breakfast" – and the gray duster and velvet skull-cap disappeared forthwith around the angle in the vestibule.

Not until he was ready to seek Burton did the passenger agent recollect that the Naught-fifty was between the Tadmor and the Ariadne, and that it would be the part of prudence to go around rather than through the President's car. When he did remember it he stepped out into the vestibule of the Tadmor to get a breath of fresh air while he waited for the train to come to a station. Mrs. Dunham was on the Naught-fifty's rear platform, and she nodded, smiled, and beckoned him to come across.

"I'm glad to know that somebody else besides a curious old woman cares enough for this grand scenery to get up early in the morning," she said, pleasantly.

"You mustn't make me ashamed," Brockway rejoined. "I'm afraid I should have been sound asleep this minute if I hadn't been routed out by one of my people."

Mrs. Dunham smiled. "Gertrude was telling me about some of your troubles. Do they get you up early in the morning to ask you foolish questions?"